Learning Enhancement
I am excited to be working at St Luke’s as part of the leadership team, with a specific focus on teaching, learning and curriculum. The staff have welcomed me into their community and I’ve had the opportunity to be in classrooms and connect with students. Teachers are perfect of examples of life-long learners, and as such are great role models for the children they teach.
Professional Learning Communities
This term the teachers began to use their professional learning time to meet as PLCs –Professional Learning Communities. The research around PLCs shows that teaching, learning and student outcomes improve when we are working collaboratively, are purposeful and strategic in our planning and have high expectations.As we start the journey in embedding this process we need goals to help us focus on the big picture of professional learning within a learning community.
Big Picture Goals
1. Teachers and leaders will work towards embedding the PLC process – learning together, creating plans of action and implementing strategies to improve instruction so all students are continuous learners and have the best opportunities for academic growth.
2. We will work together to improve learning and teaching in the area of …. (this can be
a curriculum focus / social & emotional goal/ positive behaviour / etc.)
How Does it Work?
Short cycles of goal setting and strategic planning based on the curriculum being taught
maintains focus on the skills we expect to students to learn. The cycle may be as short as
three weeks, but could be longer, depending on the goals set. The process is that the Foundation – Year 2 leader and 3 -6 leader meet with their respective learning communities to decide on the broad area of focus. Once that is established, they break into learning community groups based on year levels to decide on smart goals specific to student need within the broad area of focus. Foundation – Year 2 and Year 3-6 teams then gather together again, to share their SMART goals and planned learning journey as a PLC.
SMART Goal Setting
The focus for our first PLC is Mathematics. For Foundation students, this is all about counting. In the Junior Learning Community the goal is based on skip counting. The Middle Learning Community are working on place value to partition, rearrange and regroup numbers to at least tens of thousands to assist calculations and solve problems, and the Senior Learning Community is focused on the relationship between fractions and decimals. You can see that there is a progression through the curriculum. Differentiated practice is key to ensuring that all students make progress.
Actions and Evidence
The goals need to be actioned – what will be taught and how? How will we know students have learnt it? What data do we need as evidence of progress? What do we do if students don’t learn it? What do we do when students exceed the expectation?Teachers worked collaboratively to share ideas and agree on a plan of action with specific teaching and learning tasks, pre and post- tests to track progress, and a mid-point check-in to ensure that necessary adjustments are made for students in need of support or extra challenges.
Knowledgeable ‘Others’
The leadership team are included in the PLCs. We visited each group to be part of the conversation, to assist, to ask questions, to ensure resources are available, to problem solve and to ensure that meeting norms are followed. We are looking forward to working in Professional Learning Teams, in a continuous cycle of improvement in teaching and learning, and to seeing steady improvement in the learning outcomes of our students.
Jennifer McKillop, Jess Moodie and Eloise Liddell
Library News
Thank you to all the students who returned their library books from last year. It's been wonderful to see the students enjoy visiting the library again.
This week you would have noticed the Issue #1 Scholastic Book Club Catalogue come home with your child. In this Issue if you spend $35 or more, you will receive a $5 credit to use in Issue #2. REMEMBER that all payments are to be made online via Loop. To make payments visit scholastic.com.au/LOOP or download the LOOP app. If assistance is required with this please let us know so we can help you. Every order earns FREE books and learning resources for our school. Book Club orders close on the 19th of February 2024.
Thank you
Nicole Keenan